ABeCeDarian Reading Program

Overview

Abecedarian is an exemplary program for teaching students reading, letter formation, and spelling. Abecedarian is a research-based spelling and decoding program. The program addresses the areas of phonemic awareness, phonics, and fluency. The comprehensive and straightforward organization of the program make ABeCeDarian an excellent choice for home-schoolers.

The ABeCeDarian Reading Program doesn't attempt to provide radically new teaching techniques, but it does offer unparalleled efficiency in helping students develop into fluent and accomplished readers.

ABeCeDarian achieves efficiency by:

focusing only on essential skills and knowledge,

providing the right kind and right amount of practice, and

providing precise and productive error correction

Unlike most other phonics programs, which start with letters and present what sounds go with the letters, ABeCeDarian organizes all of its instruction by sound and shows how sounds are represented by letters. This distinction may seem quite abstract and subtle at first, but it is really quite significant. Students at the very beginning of most other programs must spend time learning what sounds go with what letters. Only after they have mastered some of these correspondences are they introduced to words. In ABeCeDarian, in contrast, the beginning readers start right off by spelling simple words like "mop" and "sat." They hear words that they are familiar with and learn how, with their teacher's help, to break these words into individual sounds as well as what letters are used to represent these sounds.

Key Features

Explicit, comprehensive multisensory phonics instruction

Sound blending and segmenting explicitly taught and practiced

Letter/Sound correspondences taught in the context of reading and spelling words

Letter sounds taught before letter names

Code knowledge organized by sounds with engaging sorting activities

No rules!

Precise practice routines and error correction procedures

Integrated handwriting and spelling instruction

Expert oral reading fluency practice

Scope and Sequence

Level A

Level A is for non-readers or very beginning readers such as kindergartners or beginning first grade students. Each lesson combines:

Level B

Choosing a level for use with Moving Beyond the Page

Moving Beyond the Page covers all Language Arts standards except those related to the mechanics of reading. ABeCeDarian is an excellent option to teach your children how to read and to write their letters.

Level A: for non-readers or very beginning readers

Level B: for students at mid-first grade through second grade level

We know that many gifted students are advanced readers so we recommend beginning Level A alongside either our Age 4-5 or Age 5-7 levels - depending upon your child's readiness and interest. You should then continue through the program until your child is finished with Level B.